Religious Discussion

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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Your belief is that the bible as a whole is false.
That is your belief and you defend it with vehemence.
I don't share that belief, nor do I believe that the bible is "the truth".
The bible is a collection of stories, many of them about morale, and how you should behave.
You can learn from that, or not.
Well if you could specify which bits you consider true we can hash this out. As for myself, I see claims such as…
Convulsions are signs of demonic possession
Humanity relies upon god for our morality and humans cannot be morale without god.
These views upon the nature of our reality are not only false, but downright harmful toward human development.

And while my upbringing was not very Christian, I do believe that in total Christianity brought more good than bad.
Then I respectfully challenge you to find the morally positive equivalent to the extermination and enslavement of the indigenous populations of Africa, Australia, South America, North America, etc in the name of the Christian god. Because I cannot. Furthermore I have mentioned several times previously (and provided a great deal of evidence) that the further away from God you get, the higher quality and quantity of life humans enjoy becomes. Your claims to the contrary must be backed up with evidence Krulle to be valid. Your personal beliefs are not considered to be credible evidence.

But since I cannot observe any universe with the same starting parameters, but without Christianity, I cannot prove whether this is actually true.
You don’t need to observe different universes, you can use this one.

And you, once again, mix the whole bible as being Christianity.
Oh no sir, no-no-no I do not. The Christian bible is a bad copy of the Jewish Torah, and the koran is a bad copy of the Christian bible. All religions are, as I see them, fragments of the same greater untruth. I see religion as a whole to be a slowly but surely disappearing leftover from an age of superstition and ignorance. Your and other posts seemed to be focusing on the Christian perspective of reality so I limited myself to that specific theism. If you like we can debate the merits of other religions and their views on reality but I consider them to be just as, if not even more so, untrue.

I don't consider the old testament as anything relevant for my beliefs, even more so when JC teached elements which contradict the old testament.
Krulle I mean no disrespect but I find it very poor praise indeed when a person’s greatest praise for their holy text is that the majority of it can be safely ignored.

The same with many parts of the new testament, as they recount elements which did not come from JC, but from others who spoke in His name, but even went against the teaching of JC.
Considering the Christian bible was created after Jesus Christ was reported to have died, it does not count as a credible source in any historical or scientific circle that I am currently aware of. Nor do I consider the teachings of Jesus to be particularly moral, for many reasons, particularly because he never says a word against slavery.

And no, Christianity does NOT evaluate you solely on your belief and submission to God.
Yes it does. That may not be your personal view but it is the historical and literal translation of the Christian bible.

Your deeds are more important than your belief.
No they aren’t, again that may not be your personal view but it is the historical and literal translation of the Christian bible. There are loopholes written into the bible to excuse even the most grievous of crimes toward your fellow humans. At times grievous harm toward your fellow humans is commanded by holy mandate.

Society as a whole is very conservative.
I respectfully insist that society is not very conservative, or even that society has a conservative majority. If that were the case the American Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, LGBT rights movement etc, would never have occurred, let alone succeeded. Humanity as a whole would not have progressed to a more secular world if conservative elements in our past held all or even most of the power.

For a long time this was the law. And it was considered to be much better than not having such a law and having to submit to the law of the stronger.
I cannot help but feel that you are misinformed concerning Christian philosophy throughout it's history. The entirety of the Christian argument is and has always been that might equals right. The Christian god is and was believed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and that he must be loved and feared in equal measure by his followers at all times. Anyone who disagrees goes straight to eternal damnation and torment. The divine right of kings alone was entirely based upon the philosophy that the super humans who occupied positions of power (the monarchy and the church) were chosen from on high by almighty god to rule over the weak, lesser beings that were everyone else.

tl;dr: IMHO the bible is a collection of stories. Even the r.c. church does not take all of it at face-value truth.
Well Krulle the problem as I see it is that though some churches have been forced to admit that they have been lying over the last few thousand years, (after a millennia of maintaining the truth of their texts in defiance of mounting evidence to the contrary) a few holdouts continue to maintain that the bible is 100% accurate and the direct word of God. Then they go to developing nations and tell people that condoms are sinful, all LBGTs are demons and that there are women performing witchcraft, all of which results in a significantly decreases quality of life for those people. I hope you can see my problem with this and agree with me that this behavior is not beneficial and is in fact harmful to all parties involved.

- also my last post on this subject; the argumentations are circular by now and based on fundamental beliefs of persons participating - nothing good can come from that –
No Krulle they are not. You are stating things as true and then not providing any credible evidence to reinforce your claims. I am providing scientificfacts and historical facts backed up by overwhelming amounts of evidence which have been collected by experts in their chosen fields over the course of the last century. I mean tt really doesn’t take much to prove the bible to be inaccurate, the book claims convulsions are signs of demonic possession for goodness sake.

And you do have a choice to not believe.
Please clarify that statement. Because to my mind a god who provides no evidence that he exists and a great deal of evidence that he does not exist, and then damning those who “choose” to not believe in him to eternal torment, does not qualify as a real choice in any meaningful way. Is the choice god presents me whether or not I can believe in him based upon bad evidence? Is that the choice that you are speaking of?

Sufficient converts in any direction have proven that they will not be slain by thunder and lightningbolts just because they seceded from Christianity.
Krulle that is technically true, but you will pardon my mentioning that the r.c. church did spend considerable time, energy and funds developing and deploying a vast number of torture devices to “save the souls” of heretics. So while those who left Christianity have never been struck by lightning bolts (to my knowledge), they have undergone massive persecution and torture at the hands of the faithful.

If you are fine with your believe, whether you name it Christianity, Catholicism, Baptism, Jewish, Moslim, Buddhaism, Taoism, Atheism, Science,... it is all fine with me.
Krulle, Science and Atheism are not systems of belief. One is an extremely useful method for determining what is true and what is false and the other is the rejection of the supernatural. Neither of those systems has anything to do with or requires faith in any way whatsoever.

Suederwind
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Suederwind »

Oh well, I feel this discussion is going nowhere, but anyway:
The Christian bible is a bad copy of the Jewish Torah, and the koran is a bad copy of the Christian bible.
Thats an unusual remark from a historian... Have you read about how the Torah, the Bible or the Quran came to be? Something about their origins, transmission history, translations, etc...? Anything?

I won't comment the rest, as it shows some serious lack of knowledge in many areas. Please don't take this personally, but you should read more about how the first religions appeared, how this influenced humanity on social, biological and other areas. A start could be this article: Link. Yes, I know thats "only" Wikipedia, but English is not my first language and I have to improvise here.
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NuclearIceCream
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by NuclearIceCream »

Props to icekatze for making an effort to try to not be biased in taking a contrary position in an argument where he is likely to draw the ire of others for doing so.

discord
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by discord »

gray: yes I will stand by my views, which incidentally dovetail your own quite well except for some small details, I think you might have skimmed a bit too much while reading my posts.

1: human nature.
Singular humans tend to be quite logical and analytical(it's a survival trait and the reason we have so big brains), in groups they tend to get stupid real fast(interestingly enough this has also been a survival trait for millions of years).
Religion tends to make this worse first by removing 'singular'(or to much of it, also known as solitary confinement aka torture) then by showing how happy they are and how much better being in a group is.
Do note the 'Tend' which I use as a placeholder for statistic probability.

2: good people of faith.
Most people of faith are good people, they are quiet, pray to whatever when they feel the need and you seldom notice them.
I seldom(there is some correlation between these two previous 'seldom') have issues with these people.
A large minority are the crazies, which have utterly turned off their brains for the glory of....whatever
These are also the second most common group to be in authority positions.
Finally we have the manipulative bastard that are often intelligent, belief optional.
quite often in it for the booty.

so lets break this down in wildass guesstimates, since i am to lazy to try and find any actual statistics, and would be vary of any such found.
~70% of those that profess faith actually have faith, the rest just go along to keep the neighbors happy and the torches and pitchforks away.
~20% are not very nice people, and may use 'faith' as a tool to be not nice to their neighbor whom may have a * which they are envious about...or whatever reason they have for being nasty people.
~20% are actually the crazy kind.
~5% are the manipulative kind
<1% are selfishly evil bastards

The ones in authority are often disproportionately represented by the (often vocal)minorities, the fewer in a group the higher the percentage of these in authority, do note that there is quite a bit of overlap, and the more overlap the more of a minority the person is the more likely to be in charge at some level.
This however is quite similar to the rest of the population, so matters little but is included as a reminder of how groups work.

3: the mindset of religion.
Now here is where it gets tricky, religion is generally dogmatic in giving you answers to all your questions(seldom factual) and about leaving choice to higher authority, both of which is in sync with human group mindedness, and therefor easily persuaded to follow in line.
To not question authority, god will forgive me and no mere mortal can judge me.....
A few more things here about how religion fills a void and other psycho babble, but you probably get the idea.

4: the conclusion.
combing #1 & #3 overlaying #2 bring us.
People of faith are often nice and good people, these nice people are also easily manipulated/brainwashed/controlled, which leads to others who are less nice then can do some really bad things with these people used as blunt instruments.
Which is why I say 'faith can be beautiful, but as soon as this becomes a group activity....well, shit happens.'


next up!
society is conservative?
It is a dynamic mess of desires and goals.
But society and more specifically the ones at the top, tend to be quite conservative, for obvious reasons if you think about it(they often fail in their endeavors to stop progress and change though).
so both agents of chaos and order move around in society, the rest of us just try and get by while avoiding the crossfire.

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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

and for you religious people out there, if you did not have the blanket safety and social acceptance of religion, the amount of delusions needed for being religious would quite possibly get you thrown into an asylum for being a danger to yourself and your surroundings, equality damn it!
Discord can you please clarify what you meant when you said this, it seemed to sound like the religious are somehow responsible for freedom of religion in the United States or that equality is the product of religious individuals or of religion itself. That would contradict much of what I know of the founding fathers and their reasoning behind establishing freedom of religion, most of which was due to many of them being from a nation where one church was overwhelmingly oppressive and dysfunctional and they desperately wanted to not have a repeat of that fiasco. If this is not what you meant I apologize, but please clarify.

so lets break this down in wildass guesstimates
Discord please, let's really not. Unless you have actual statistical information to provide to back up your claims, self admitted estimations of a population's religiosity are not beneficial to your argument. They instead dramatically weaken your argument. I am trying to be helpful here Discord.

Most people of faith are good people, they are quiet, pray to whatever when they feel the need and you seldom notice them.
I seldom(there is some correlation between these two previous 'seldom') have issues with these people.
A large minority are the crazies, which have utterly turned off their brains for the glory of....whatever
These are also the second most common group to be in authority positions.
Finally we have the manipulative bastard that are often intelligent, belief optional.
quite often in it for the booty.

Discord I respectfully disagree with you that any society or individual can base their decisions upon willful ignorance and a lack of credible evidence and earn the label of good. They may do some good by accident, but for the most part they are doing great harm. For example when a good person of faith donates money to their church, and their church takes that money overseas to a developing nation and uses it to proclaim "condoms are sinful" they are not doing good. They are measurably weakening that nation's population, economy, military, society, etc. To my mind, even in the best case scenario, the person of good faith is being conned into doing great evil. That is to say nothing of those people of good faith who support churches who have institutionalized the rape of children on the international scale, and when said churches are confronted about it swap those rapists from parish to parish so they can find fresh victims and threaten the victim's families with damnation in the afterlife and legal prosecution in this one.

4: the conclusion.
combing #1 & #3 overlaying #2 bring us.
People of faith are often nice and good people, these nice people are also easily manipulated/brainwashed/controlled, which leads to others who are less nice then can do some really bad things with these people used as blunt instruments.
Which is why I say 'faith can be beautiful, but as soon as this becomes a group activity....well, shit happens.'
I do not understand how you can say that easily manipulated people who can be regularly deceived into doing great harm can be good. At best I see them as a chaotic element that swings wheresoever their whims dictate. Do you mean that evil actions do not count as evil because the people of faith believe them to be good? If it was my deep and heartfelt religious belief that my next door neighbor's daughter was a witch and that she was casting an evil spell over my house to murder me, and that the most moral action I could take was to destroy her, and I carry through with that action, am I incapable of being found guilty of murder?
Discord I do not mean to offer offense but I simply do not see how ignorance and gullibility can be viewed as beautiful. Can you please explain why you think this and provide a few examples? I am really not meaning to be disrespectful here, I honestly can not conceive of a situation where blind faith is a beautiful thing.

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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Thats an unusual remark from a historian... Have you read about how the Torah, the Bible or the Quran came to be? Something about their origins, transmission history, translations, etc...? Anything?
Suederwind the similarities between Judaism, Christianity, Islam and their respective texts have been internationally recognized and verified for over a century, if not more. Many stories and songs in the torah are also in the bible, which are also copied (sometimes word for word) into the quran. All three religions share many of the same prophets, holy sites, stories and there is a great deal of shared history between them all. All three are said to be "people of the book" and generally recognize each other as being fellow believers in the same god, but also consider each other to be fundamentally and tragically mistaken in many of their views upon god. At many times in history the three have been engaged in war against each other over the same lands which all consider sacred.
I won't comment the rest, as it shows some serious lack of knowledge in many areas.
Suederwind if you have information which counters what I have been taught and what I have studied, I would ask you to please present it. We are both adults having an adult conversation and if something I have said is incorrect I will gladly admit that and apologize for it. To my knowledge, everything I have thus far stated is backed up by massive amounts of historical and scientific data.
Please don't take this personally, but you should read more about how the first religions appeared, how this influenced humanity on social, biological and other areas. A start could be this article: Link. Yes, I know thats "only" Wikipedia, but English is not my first language and I have to improvise here.
Suederwind I am very interested in the beginnings of religion, truly I am. However as I am a citizen of the United States and as there has been an unprecedented attempt by religious fundamentalists to insert their religion into the secular functions of the United States, particularly into public schools, I am far more concerned with Christianity at this particular moment in time. I will review your link when I can, I hold little bias against Wiki articles, they are excellent places to begin the quest for knowledge.

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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Krulle »

This just squeezed in, today's comic from SaturdayMorningBreakfastCeareal-comics about heaven and who goes there (or not)...
SpoilerShow
Image
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

Krulle
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Krulle »

Grayhome wrote:I shall list a few right now, focusing upon Christianity to conserve time: [...]the African slave trade, the extermination and enslavement of indigenous South American peoples, the extermination of indigenous North American peoples, [...].
You do know why the African Slave trade did start? Because the church officially recognised the indigenous people of America, back then referred to as "Indians", as Humans, and thus prohibited their enslavement.
But the Church was not almighty, and there were limits to what it could do. [1, 2, the older factual recognition of Southern Amerindians by the Fransciscans, and Domenicans [3.]
You now rightfully ask why they never recognised the African populations as Humans at the same time, nor why they haven't been recognised earlier? And why they were not very enforcing in pushing?
There were limits to what you can achieve. And the personal interests of high-ranking people inside and outside of the church.
So, personal power of church-individuals and other individuals were running against the teachings of the religion.
And while the formal recognition in form of such a high-ranking publication was missing, the churches have recognised the indigenous Africans as Humans, why else would you ever try to convert them to Christianity?
(And I find it really bad that the church officially withdrew this bull, although it had its errors from the start.)
Grayhome wrote:
- also my last post on this subject; the argumentations are circular by now and based on fundamental beliefs of persons participating - nothing good can come from that –
No Krulle they are not. You are stating things as true and then not providing any credible evidence to reinforce your claims. I am providing scientificfacts and historical facts backed up by overwhelming amounts of evidence which have been collected by experts in their chosen fields over the course of the last century. I mean tt really doesn’t take much to prove the bible to be inaccurate, the book claims convulsions are signs of demonic possession for goodness sake.
(I find most of what you cite extremely biased and hinging on questionable starting points, and they totally miss out on the historic context. Therefore I skimmed through most of your citations and dismissed them without further comments as much as you dismiss the teaching of religion because of church.)
I will not comment on the rest anymore. I will elaborate this a tiny bit, and hope you'll understand why and where I'm coming from.
My history teacher was very aggressively against anything "religious". This made me think about religion, belief, and church.
I had some very fine arguments with her (up to the point that the teacher's council had to step in).
That was about 25 years ago, and the discussion was based on German publications (mostly independent magazines, definitely I learnt to avoid church-sponsored organisation publications; for a large part it were "G-Geschichte mit Pfiff" publications).
The content of those publication got stuck in my head.
But I'd have to invest months to refind the publications, as they have never made the transition to electronic publications. I would have to trace down physical copies, scan them and translate them for you. No way am I spending that much time into an online discussion.
I could try to chase down other publications, but for obvious reasons I will refrain from using what I found in the short time I was willing to invest, as those are publications from church-sponsored organisations, which you will dismiss as biased immediately (and in large parts you are right - which is why I won't use them, as previous discussions have shown that they'll de dismissed just because about 80% of all publications of these organisations are... far from any scientific method; and some are utter rubbish to start with).

But from that time in school quite a bit of knowledge got stuck in my head, and as you will never take my knowledge as it is, continuation of the discussion is pointless.

It was the time that founded my belief. And many priests I had discussions with recognise what I believe in as "Christian", but would never define it as "Catholic", "Protestant",... I seem to have found my belief which seems to be independent from belief as taught by the established churches here.

Also: when I refer to JC, I don't believe that someone with the name of Jesus of Nazareth did exist and performed even half of the actions described.
I believe the stories are an amalgamated "best-of" collection of stories of the masses of wandering priests of that time.
The morals taught are still true.


And "JC" did say something against slavery.
Do you know the historic meaning of "turn the other cheek"?
Modern society interprets is wrongly. I'll let you find out yourself.
(It's NOT pacifism, although that's a (minor) part of it, and the only modern interpretation still in use.
The original meaning does not work in modern context.
And you'll need an accurate version of the passage, one that specifies the cheek. Modern translations often only refer to "cheek".)
Last edited by Krulle on Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:14 am, edited 7 times in total.
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charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

Nemo
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Nemo »


I gave the study a look over and its deeply flawed. It pairs off "religiosity" and "dysfunction" and looks for correlations. It defines dysfunction through things such as homicide and abortion. The trouble is it treats the population of each country as a homogeneous unit, and does not identify nor break out subsections or outliers. Let me grab the asbestos suit and say it, race/ethnicity has a strong correlation. If you examine the subsections for "religiosity" you get different results than the study itself because of the strength of the US outliers.

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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Suederwind »

Suederwind the similarities between Judaism, Christianity, Islam and their respective texts have been internationally recognized and verified for over a century, if not more. Many stories and songs in the torah are also in the bible, which are also copied (sometimes word for word) into the quran.
Thats basically right, but didn't answer my questions. Again: have you read something about how those texts came to be? How they were translated, etc...? I think this could lead to a better understanding from your side and would invalidate many of your arguments.
Suederwind if you have information which counters what I have been taught and what I have studied, I would ask you to please present it. We are both adults having an adult conversation and if something I have said is incorrect I will gladly admit that and apologize for it. To my knowledge, everything I have thus far stated is backed up by massive amounts of historical and scientific data.
Look, I have done this discussion with other people, likeminded to you, over and over again. Been there, done that, won the t-shirt. It has nothing to do with one of us beeing more adult that the other, its what you have brought up so far, that raises a doubt about your remark that your arguments are backed by masses of historical and scientific data.
However as I am a citizen of the United States and as there has been an unprecedented attempt by religious fundamentalists to insert their religion into the secular functions of the United States, particularly into public schools, I am far more concerned with Christianity at this particular moment in time.
Grayhome, I know my fair share of religious zealots, too. I can't say much for the USA, but here in good old Germany such fanatics are usually left alone, as they are no threat to the public, with the exception of Islamists. Christians here live usually a peaceful life, sure there are some nutjobs, but those won't do more than preaching and handing out the new testament.
On the other side, and much more troublesome in my eyes, are those anti religious (read: anti christian) fanatics. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against atheists, agnostics, etc... beliving in a faith or not is up to each person, but I don't like missionaries and intollerant persons. People that are offended if you whish them happy christmas, that move next to a church and start sueing for the bells to be switched of at all times, that want to remove crosses on the summits of a mountains, etc...
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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Communist governments killed just how many millions, tens of millions, estimates as high as 120 million or more of their own citizens through one means or another in the last century? Hardly say they put themselves out as representative of faith. Much the opposite. Communist doctrine, Marxist doctrine, holds faith as an enemy of human development.
Nemo, Russia was overwhelmingly Christian for centuries before the communists took over. After Stalin died the Christian religion reemerged quickly, and today Russia is measured as around 75% Christian. Given this information it is illogical for you to attempt to argue that Russia could simply flip a collective switch and turn off the religion. To my mind it is for more logical that their beliefs were hidden due to fear of being persecuted and once that fear no longer existed, they simply came out of the closet, so to speak.

In fact, every example given in history of the terrible influence of faith shows collusion of both faith and government. And government devoid of faith is no better, as noted just above. Perhaps the corrupting influence is not faith, but the power of government? Western Civilization's separation of church and state was developed in no small part in recognition of that.
Nemo please understand that when you say that governments devoid of faith are no better than governments who have faith in the supernatural, you are quantifiably incorrect. Examining a single nation’s trends throughout a very small section of its history and then ignoring vast swathes of it’s history to prove a point does not donate credibility to your argument. We have peer reviewed, exhaustively researched, quantifiable evidence in the form of massive international research projects measuring the religiosity of dozens of nations and how that ties in with their respective prosperity. These research reports have been conducted by the most accredited sources on the planet, and have mountains of data backing them. These results have proven, beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt, that nations that have higher levels of faith have lower levels of literacy, education, wealth, while at the same time have high rates of unemployment, disease, hunger, civil conflict, murder, etc. Simultaneously nations with low levels of religiosity have high levels of employment, wealth, education, literacy and lower levels of crime, murder, disease, hunger, civil conflict, etc.

But why does it matter? Separation of powers. As power becomes more centralized and absolute abuse follows. In modern governments we have separated the legislative and executive powers. (At least in theory, sore point for me there but I'll save that for another day.) That is, one body decides the law and one body executes the law. Where is the law then sourced from? Moral reason. What guides moral reason? Behind every well reasoned, or not so well reasoned, position of moral impetus lies a certain set of axioms held to be true on, ultimately, faith. Amusingly, even atheist morality requires faith to function.
Nemo atheism is not a morality. It is a rejection of the supernatural as explanations for phenomena occurring in the universe. There is no such thing as atheist morality.
As for the United States, we don’t base our legal systems on faith either, we base them upon what works. A good example of this is slavery. Slavery was considered a just and moral action by those of faith and they rightly defended it for centuries with passages from their respective holy books. However, even though the society believed that their faith based moral code made them superior to other societies, that did not stop their society from being measurably inferior to societies that outlawed slavery.
Another good example is the debasement of women in many societies throughout the world, both past and present. We know now for example that preventing half of your total population from having jobs, owning property, driving vehicles, joining the military, being educated is a stupendously foolish thing to do and nations which do these things are going to be measurably inferior to societies that do not. We go with what has been proven to work and we reject what doesn’t; there is no faith required in this equation, only math.

Government is the power to carry out the predominate, common moral nature of a society. Again, that nature being an extension of faith. When government intrudes on the realm of the religious, it sets itself up as the source of moral nature. Axiom -> reason -> law -> execution becomes execution -> axiom -> reason-> law. In this way you could say it begets itself. This loop is dangerous. We witness the loop in atheist structures as well, except that atheists tend to believe themselves morally superior and immune to religious faults. Almost amusing, if not for the death toll.
Nemo I do not understand where you are getting this viewpoint that atheism makes claims of any sort concerning morality or immunity from faults. Atheism is the rejection of the supernatural as explanation for naturally occurring phenomena, full stop. You seem (and I mean no disrespect when I say this) not to understand the basics tenants to what you are saying here. The following link is to a youtube page which promotes positive atheism and clearly explains what atheism is, I respectfully ask that you watch a few of their videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAtheistExperience

Then you haven't examined them hard enough. Islam is inseparable from government, as it prescribes itself as the government in the Koran. Christianity makes a distinction between itself and Caesar.
Nemo I respectfully disagree with your analysis on this topic. The many legal battles that have been waged across the United States for the past thirty years or so to get religion into the schools, courtrooms, city halls, etc of America would disagree with you. We have god on our money, we have god in the pledge of allegiance, we have nativity scenes on city hall grounds all over the United States, the infringements of the church into state are well documented and frequent. Christianity was inseparable from the government throughout the majority of its history, and still is in many parts of the world. Do you honestly think that it could not be so in the United States, were the laws changed and the constitution amended to permit it?

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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Whoa guys please, one at a time here, I will get to every one of you, I promise.

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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Thats basically right, but didn't answer my questions. Again: have you read something about how those texts came to be? How they were translated, etc...? I think this could lead to a better understanding from your side and would invalidate many of your arguments.
Suederwind, that the Abrahamic faiths share (i.e. were plagiarized by each other) common elements, stories, prophets, holy sites is an internationally recognized historical fact. I can throw you a link or two that can get you started:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_ ... narratives
https://pressthat.wordpress.com/2007/05 ... the-quran/

I found those in about 5 mins of online searching, that should be enough to get you started. Your counterpoints to my arguments so far seem to be along the lines of "nu uh!" and then personal assassinations of my character, questioning my credentials, followed by a total lack of any evidence whatsoever. I respectfully mention this as it greatly discredits you when you are attempting to counter my points in debate.
Look, I have done this discussion with other people, like minded to you, over and over again. Been there, done that, won the t-shirt. It has nothing to do with one of us beeing more adult that the other, its what you have brought up so far, that raises a doubt about your remark that your arguments are backed by masses of historical and scientific data.
Then I respectfully challenge you to counter my argument with historical and scientific facts, because so far you have not. That the crusades, witch burnings, inquisitions, African slave trade, etc were all undertaken upon religious grounds, for religious reasons and with the direct support of the highest authorities of their respective churches of the time is not a debated point by any historian that I am currently aware of.
Grayhome, I know my fair share of religious zealots, too. I can't say much for the USA, but here in good old Germany such fanatics are usually left alone, as they are no threat to the public, with the exception of Islamists. Christians here live usually a peaceful life, sure there are some nutjobs, but those won't do more than preaching and handing out the new testament.
On the other side, and much more troublesome in my eyes, are those anti religious (read: anti christian) fanatics. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against atheists, agnostics, etc... beliving in a faith or not is up to each person, but I don't like missionaries and intollerant persons. People that are offended if you whish them happy christmas, that move next to a church and start sueing for the bells to be switched of at all times, that want to remove crosses on the summits of a mountains, etc...
Well Suederwind that's true in Germany but here in the United States those same religious fanatics occupy positions of great power in the government. In many sectors of the United States it is now outright impossible to be elected into public office unless you profess faith in the right god of the right religion. Being accused of, or even associating with atheists is the kiss of death in the political arena.

Krulle
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discord
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by discord »

Grayhome wrote:
and for you religious people out there, if you did not have the blanket safety and social acceptance of religion, the amount of delusions needed for being religious would quite possibly get you thrown into an asylum for being a danger to yourself and your surroundings, equality damn it!
Discord can you please clarify what you meant when you said this, it seemed to sound like the religious are somehow responsible for freedom of religion in the United States or that equality is the product of religious individuals or of religion itself. That would contradict much of what I know of the founding fathers and their reasoning behind establishing freedom of religion, most of which was due to many of them being from a nation where one church was overwhelmingly oppressive and dysfunctional and they desperately wanted to not have a repeat of that fiasco. If this is not what you meant I apologize, but please clarify.

#not responsible for it, just saying that if you remove 'religion' as a concept(and excuse) and just look at what they believe in, they would quite correctly be deemed delusional and possibly outright insane.

so lets break this down in wildass guesstimates
Discord please, let's really not. Unless you have actual statistical information to provide to back up your claims, self admitted estimations of a population's religiosity are not beneficial to your argument. They instead dramatically weaken your argument. I am trying to be helpful here Discord.

#just wanted to point out that if you break up people of faith the amount of 'nasty' people is pretty much the same as in the general population, that and the overlap of personalities.
Most people of faith are good people, they are quiet, pray to whatever when they feel the need and you seldom notice them.
I seldom(there is some correlation between these two previous 'seldom') have issues with these people.
A large minority are the crazies, which have utterly turned off their brains for the glory of....whatever
These are also the second most common group to be in authority positions.
Finally we have the manipulative bastard that are often intelligent, belief optional.
quite often in it for the booty.

Discord I respectfully disagree with you that any society or individual can base their decisions upon willful ignorance and a lack of credible evidence and earn the label of good. They may do some good by accident, but for the most part they are doing great harm. For example when a good person of faith donates money to their church, and their church takes that money overseas to a developing nation and uses it to proclaim "condoms are sinful" they are not doing good. They are measurably weakening that nation's population, economy, military, society, etc. To my mind, even in the best case scenario, the person of good faith is being conned into doing great evil. That is to say nothing of those people of good faith who support churches who have institutionalized the rape of children on the international scale, and when said churches are confronted about it swap those rapists from parish to parish so they can find fresh victims and threaten the victim's families with damnation in the afterlife and legal prosecution in this one.

#The individual donates money to what he believes to be a good cause.
#The cause then uses these funds to do not so good things.
#does this make the first individual evil? or doing bad things? no, he is a pretty nice person, just gullible and naive which is used by others.
4: the conclusion.
combing #1 & #3 overlaying #2 bring us.
People of faith are often nice and good people, these nice people are also easily manipulated/brainwashed/controlled, which leads to others who are less nice then can do some really bad things with these people used as blunt instruments.
Which is why I say 'faith can be beautiful, but as soon as this becomes a group activity....well, shit happens.'
I do not understand how you can say that easily manipulated people who can be regularly deceived into doing great harm can be good. At best I see them as a chaotic element that swings wheresoever their whims dictate. Do you mean that evil actions do not count as evil because the people of faith believe them to be good? If it was my deep and heartfelt religious belief that my next door neighbor's daughter was a witch and that she was casting an evil spell over my house to murder me, and that the most moral action I could take was to destroy her, and I carry through with that action, am I incapable of being found guilty of murder?
Discord I do not mean to offer offense but I simply do not see how ignorance and gullibility can be viewed as beautiful. Can you please explain why you think this and provide a few examples? I am really not meaning to be disrespectful here, I honestly can not conceive of a situation where blind faith is a beautiful thing.
#faith comes in many forms, faith in yourself, faith in humanity(guilty of this one), faith in your spouse, faith that all mighty being tells you to be a better person and be nice to others.... or faith in a scientific hypothesis that your peers ridicule, most of these are often quite delusional, but makes you capable of pushing on and trying to achieve more, and every once in a while the results can be quite fantastic.


#individual people of faith are usually quite nice, once they get into a group it usually goes to shit with a rocket booster.
#sadly they seldom are alone. :(

i do not get these quotes....whatever, to lazy to bother.

Suederwind
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Suederwind »

Suederwind, that the Abrahamic faiths share (i.e. were plagiarized by each other) common elements, stories, prophets, holy sites is an internationally recognized historical fact.
I know that and thats a nice startingpoint. Go on from there. What else do you know about how those books were written, created, passed on, translated, etc...? What do you know about the authors, the books that didn't make it into the bible, etc... If you have done that, ask yourself if your following statement is still true:"The Christian bible is a bad copy of the Jewish Torah, and the koran is a bad copy of the Christian bible."
Your counterpoints to my arguments so far seem to be along the lines of "nu uh!" and then personal assassinations of my character, questioning my credentials, followed by a total lack of any evidence whatsoever. I respectfully mention this as it greatly discredits you when you are attempting to counter my points in debate.
Look, my personal experiences tell me, that it is much better to show someone the way and let him find out for himself, especially if its someone how argues like you. But anyway, as you asked for it: Lets talk about one example, the crusades.
were all undertaken upon religious grounds, for religious reasons and with the direct support of the highest authorities of their respective churches of the time is not a debated point by any historian that I am currently aware of.
First one has to understand, that the crusades are just one in a long chain of events between various faction and wasn't even the endpoint. But reducing the crusades simply to a religious conflict is far too narrow sighted.
So, to start, lets focus on the first crusade: Before the crusades, there were a lot of wars between Byzantium and the various muslim factions. The Byzantin Empire could hold out for himself, most of the time, but the situation got worse with the advent of the Seljuq dynasty. You have to understand, that Religion was used in that conflict (as many before and afterwards) as a tool, to get the various nobilities to go and support the East Roman Empire against their enemy.
Alexios I. Komnenos asked the Pope to send him help, as he thought, that he was the highest authority in the West (and he had some trouble with the German Kaiser). His bargin token was, that he offered a merger of the East and Western Church. All Alexios wanted were a bunch of mercenaries to strenghen his army, but the Pope had none. So, the Pope asked various Dukes and other nobilities for help and that didn't work, too. Only afterwards we have the events of 1095, because some of the Dukes he asked saw an opportunity to increase their wealth and lands.
What followed afterwards, the Peoples crusade, the fighting amongst the crusaders, the struggles between crusaders and Byzantium, the alliances with muslim leaders, etc... Was not what any of the involved churches would have wanted and lead to massive problems between Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
The following crusades were never as succesfull or well organised and therefore never succeded. It would take too long to get into details here, but when you actually look closer, you will find out, that the crusades were not only fought for religious reasons, upon religious grounds. Especially in later times crusades were simply used as a tool to fight someones enemies, the religious justification became less and less important (see for example the Fourth Crusade).
I am not sure if P. Thoraus "Die Kreuzzüge" was ever translated into English, another interesting, but controverse startingpoint could be R.Starks "God's Battalions". Maybe you look into those for more information.

I hope that answers some of your questions. Its similar with the other topics you picked, but I do not have the time to go through them all and temerature has rissen over 35°C.
Well Suederwind that's true in Germany but here in the United States those same religious fanatics occupy positions of great power in the government.
That might as well be a matter of perspective. One of the ruling parties of Germany at the moment is the CDU, the Christian Democratical Union. I know people that think they are fanatics, because they have Christian in their name. However, who does occupy this "positions of great power" in the US goverment?
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discord
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by discord »

sueder: just about everyone, since it is damn near impossible to get into high office in the US without professing christian faith, which means you have to at least seem to care about religious hot potatoes.
until the end of the presidents second term, when he no longer needs to care and sometimes throw out some curve balls.

just to point out that in some parts of the US atheist is a worse label than murderer.... i think child molester still outweighs it though, assuming of course that the offender in question is not a catholic priest.

The US of A, today not so much developed country home of the worlds largest criminal gang(the police) and the center of christian fanatics to boot.
exaggerating for effect, but not far enough from the truth for comfort.

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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Krulle »

Grayhome wrote:
Communist governments killed just how many millions, tens of millions, estimates as high as 120 million or more of their own citizens through one means or another in the last century? Hardly say they put themselves out as representative of faith. Much the opposite. Communist doctrine, Marxist doctrine, holds faith as an enemy of human development.
Nemo, Russia was overwhelmingly Christian for centuries before the communists took over. After Stalin died the Christian religion reemerged quickly, and today Russia is measured as around 75% Christian. Given this information it is illogical for you to attempt to argue that Russia could simply flip a collective switch and turn off the religion. To my mind it is for more logical that their beliefs were hidden due to fear of being persecuted and once that fear no longer existed, they simply came out of the closet, so to speak.
If you throw numbers, please take numbers that cannot be disproved so easily. Currently, all Christian factions together make less than 50% of the Russian population...1

And he never wrote that the Russians threw a switch.
Nor that such a switch would work.
He said that total Atheist governments are not better than you claim Christian governments to be.
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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Krulle
Oops, you are quite correct sir, I read the graph wrong. 75% of the total religious population is Christian. Thank you for the catch.

Russian Orthodox 15-20%, Muslim 10-15%, other Christian 2% (2006 est.)
note: estimates are of practicing worshipers; Russia has large populations of non-practicing believers and non-believers, a legacy of over seven decades of Soviet rule

Hmm, according to this only about 12% of Russians identify as atheists, and they have a growing Muslim population. Thank you CIA Factbook!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wga5A6R ... ga5A6R9BJg
Last edited by Grayhome on Thu Aug 06, 2015 6:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Grayhome
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Grayhome »

Suederwind

I can offer you these videos by the internationally famous/infamous journalist Christopher Hitchens, who explores the subject of the curious similarities between the Abrahamic faith's holy texts in greater length. Brace yourself, to say that he is critical of religion is an understatement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbX0rknLhDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGPaJvRne-A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MmdR116qFY

First one has to understand, that the crusades are just one in a long chain of events between various faction and wasn't even the endpoint. But reducing the crusades simply to a religious conflict is far too narrow sighted.
As I live and breath, I have honestly never had anyone try to argue the point that the Holy Crusades of Europe were not religiously motivated. Suederwind we have documents from the time, personal letters, memoirs, diaries, historical recordings by official scholars, vast amounts of documentation from the churches of the age, etc. All of this claims faith as the primary motivation for the crusades. The primary objective of the crusades was to reclaim holy lands from the infidels. I think I should also bring to your attention that the Roman Catholic church has officially admitted that they were to blame for the crusades and have issued official statements of apology.
That might as well be a matter of perspective. One of the ruling parties of Germany at the moment is the CDU, the Christian Democratical Union. I know people that think they are fanatics, because they have Christian in their name. However, who does occupy this "positions of great power" in the US goverment?
Well our previous president, George W. Bush is an excellent example. He launched what is going to go down in history as one of the greatest military blunders of all time and called it a crusade, publicly claiming that god told him to do it. That man is going to go down in history as one of the worst US presidents of all time, he had a very powerful religious base.

Wow, I'm actually glad in a way that other nations don't know about the embarrassing fiasco our electoral process has become. Nowadays in many states you have no chance of winning unless you oppose LBGT rights, abortion, contraceptives, medicare, social security and are a fundamentalist Christian. The major challenger in the last election of our current president was a Mormon, for goodness sakes.

Suederwind
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Re: Religious Discussion

Post by Suederwind »

@Discord:
just about everyone, since it is damn near impossible to get into high office in the US without professing christian faith, which means you have to at least seem to care about religious hot potatoes. until the end of the presidents second term, when he no longer needs to care and sometimes throw out some curve balls.
Every German chancler since 1949 was in one way or another a christian, too. From the beginning of the current republic till about the 1980s christianity was a very important political factor. However, that shifted away since then. I don't mean they are unimportant nowadays, but they don't have this huge amount of political influence like in Adenauers days.
just to point out that in some parts of the US atheist is a worse label than murderer.... i think child molester still outweighs it though, assuming of course that the offender in question is not a catholic priest.
I assume its that way because of those many little christian sects? There are a few of those here and most people won't notice them. Most of them are either remnants of traditions from the time of the reformation or recent imports from the US, like Mormons. The majority of people here (around 2/3) are either roman catholic or protestant. However, atheism beeing worse than murder... thats crazy.

@Grayhome:
Well our previous president, George W. Bush is an excellent example. He launched what is going to go down in history as one of the greatest military blunders of all time and called it a crusade, publicly claiming that god told him to do it. That man is going to go down in history as one of the worst US presidents of all time, he had a very powerful religious base.
To say that this guy was bad is a serious understatement. Never liked that guy and that whole invade Iraq thing was bejond stupid.
Wow, I'm actually glad in a way that other nations don't know about the embarrassing fiasco our electoral process has become.
I was never that good in US politics, but from what I have heard, electing a new president is almost absurdly complex.

Will further answer you tomorrow.
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